Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Murdered in Their BedsThe History & Hauntings of the Villisca Ax Murders
By Troy Taylor (2012)

“Something terrible
has happened here…” Those were the words uttered by Ross Moore
after discovering the bodies of his brother, his family and two
houseguests in Villisca, Iowa in June 1912. That horrifying
discovery created a legend that became both an unsolved mystery
and a haunting that continues to this day.
The small town of Villisca received an unwelcome visitor on that
dark night and the town was touched by a horror unlike anything
that it had seen before – or has seen since. Over the years, the
brutal murders committed that night have earned a place in
infamy and they remain the most famous in a series of murders
that were committed across the prairie during that era. But that
night in June was not the first time that the monster who
committed the “Villisca Ax Murders” had tasted blood. He blazed
a terrible trail across the region in the years before and after
the Villisca murders, using the railroad lines to carry out his
horrific deeds. This book will bring you the story of the
Villisca Ax Murders, along with the history and the hauntings
that followed, but it tells another story as well. It is a tale
of madness, murder, horror and blood and the story of the
“transient butcher” who wreaked havoc in the American Midwest
and then vanished into history, his name and face forever
unknown. Only his dark legacy lingers behind with us today and
it remains a chronicle of one of the bloodiest unsolved murders
sprees in our history.

The small towns of the American prairie were never the same
again. $17.00